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Lessons from the Digiday Agency Innovation Camp

Jul. 03, 2014 | by Bridget Lackie

I was fortunate enough to attend the Digiday Agency Innovation Camp in Vail, CO last week. At the #DAIC, rising stars from agencies across the country came together to compete in a brand hack-a-thon, which challenged us to come up with creative ideas to solve a brand problem. In addition, the team mentors and brand hack-a-thon judges (all impressive leaders in the industry) delivered presentations to the whole camp, giving advice and offering insight.

One of my favorite presentations was by HUGE’s Sophie Kleber who presented on “How to Let the Best Ideas Break Through.” Sophie’s top three tips for nurturing breakthrough ideas and cultivating creativity amongst a team were the following:

1. Define — Sophie explained how important it is to define the business challenge and set boundaries around a project. Team leaders should define the goal and the process for achieving it because the parameters around a goal are very critical to its success. Team leaders should also define the motivation for achieving the goal (which can be different for everyone). Understanding motivation brings empathy to the team and empathy opens the heart for creativity, according to Sophie.

2. Respect —Great team leaders exhibit respect for their team and their skills by giving them the ability to concentrate on what they are supposed to do. They also protect their team from the crazy distractions that arise, such as an abundance of email and bureaucracy. Along these lines, Sophie suggested that small teams are ideal. Too many layers of people and oversight can take credit away from the team and thus take away respect (and the ability to let the best ideas break through).

3. Push —Team leaders should push their teams out of their comfort zone, and push them to iterate. Teams should critique each other’s work and listen to each other carefully. Individuals and teams need pressure; pressure is good for creativity. Although after each period of high pressure and hard work, there needs to be a period of rest to recharge.

These three tips for lettings the best ideas break through really resonated with me. In our industry, it is easy to avoid setting boundaries in hopes of achieving some unforeseen innovation. However, I agree that defining the right parameters for a project, respecting your team and pushing each other will foster creativity and produce outstanding work.

We put all three of these ideas to work during the Digiday camp as well. The goal of the camp was defined at the very beginning. We, of course, had to respectfully come together and work with people we wouldn’t normally (our peers at competitors agencies). And finally, they really pushed us at Digiday Agency Innovation Camp. Each team was assigned a different challenging client brief. However, our days were jam-packed with speakers and other activities. We really had to maximize the relatively little time was had as a team to strategize and put together presentations in two days. The push and the pressure were good though. It was really interesting how different teams approached the same brief and to hear all the great ideas everyone had. Overall, the #DAIC was a great experience and one I would recommend others take advantage of the experience next year if given the chance.

One of the winning #DAIC teams with judges David Slayden (Boulder Digital Works), Evan Russak (CP+B); and Nick Friese (Digiday)